Re: How does this sound as a group project??? (Longish)

*please* do this :) I'd absolutely love to see this in place. I know
it's not needed but I have web space I could put it up on if someone put
it together...

--- saint
    Build Your Own Arcade Controls FAQ
    http://www.arcadecontrols.speedhost.com

On Wed, 17 May 2000, Paul Sommers wrote:

> Gang,
>
> Last night someone dropped off a Stargate boardset for me to have a go a
> repairing. As I don't really know what I'm doing I always set their
> expectations that they may get it back still broken.
>
> I sat down with the info from Dave Langley's website (in particular The
> Ranger Chronicles) and within an hour had fixed the boardset.
>
> That type of repair makes my week - especially when you consider I knew
> nothing about electronics when I started this just over 2 years ago.
>
> Feeling pretty good I turned back to my Berzerk, and now the moving garbage
> I had when I powered down last night has gone back to static garbage.
>
> I poked and prodded for a while using the Duck Hunting method (shoot at
> anything that moves - you're bound to hit something) and realised quickly I
> was completely lost.
>
> Took a break and it really hit me what my particular problem was - and maybe
> other people are experiencing this, although I realise there is an awful
> high level of expertise on this list.
>
> While the books I read can teach me what a NAND gate is, and Kev has written
> an excellent Logic Probe FAQ, and there is a ton of help out there (you guys
> have no idea how many games you have brought back to life in Australia)...
>
> I don't have a troubleshooting methodology.
>
> Or at least it stops at a certain point (check voltages & connections,
> reseat chips, verify roms).
>
> I thought it might be a good resource (and I volunteer to collate and put it
> all together as I can offer little technical skills and would benefit
> greatly) if we all contribute to a methodology for newbies or the
> inexperienced.
>
> So after the obvious above - where do you go next? The CPU? What should you
> be looking for? Should you see different signals on different CPU's?
>
> This should be very generic but we can concentrate on maybe Z80, 6502,
> 6809...
>
> Then maybe we could move onto the ROMS - how to check the roms are
> functioning correctly...
>
> Or maybe someone has this in a book specific to videogame troubleshooting
> and we don't do this at all. Or maybe we should move this to RGVAC?
>
> Your thoughts?
>
> Cheers
> Paul
>
>
>

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Received on Thu May 18 19:33:55 2000